


Sustenance

by AHumanFemale, Tiberias



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Food Porn, Inspired again by Summermint, M/M, Smut, Sonny is a Personal Chef, actual porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 13:19:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11875329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHumanFemale/pseuds/AHumanFemale, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiberias/pseuds/Tiberias
Summary: Olivia is worried that Rafael isn't taking care of himself - poor meals, snacks with coffee and liquor.  When his birthday comes around she arranges for a one-of-a-kind gift... a personal chef, Dominick Carisi Jr.  A man who will live in his home and cook all his meals - for one month.A month can last an eternity.Rafael wishes it would.





	Sustenance

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired, yet again, by the marvelous work of summermint on Tumblr. If you're on Tumblr and haven't found their blog yet, please do. More than worth it.
> 
> For my Tumblr wifey, barisilub. She is a marvelous writer and an even better friend. Happy birthday, my love. I hope it's everything you wished for. <3
> 
> Thank you to Robin Hood and tobeconspicuous for beta-ing this for me. OT3 4 Eva.

 

 

**_[Chef AU by summermint.](http://summermint.tumblr.com/post/164416582532/au-where-olivia-is-worried-and-tired-to-see-his) _ **

 

Every minute of that month should have been a pain.

A pain to have a stranger in his home.

To admit his friend didn’t think he could feed himself.

A pain to grudgingly accept what he was being given.

To want more.

A pain to want what he couldn’t have.

Sonny was everything he didn’t realize he wanted to begin with.  A kind, smiling, generous whirlwind in his home who made the rest of his days feel empty.  He was intuitive; empathetic.  Funny, even if Rafael was loathe to admit it.  Relaxed enough to wear old jeans and threadbare t-shirts even around Rafael, who was never anything but completely composed with other people - a fact that wasn't lost on him.  They both recognized the moment Rafael removed his jacket, loosened his tie.  Unbuttoned his waistcoat as he sat down at the bar to watch Sonny work.

It was different after that.

Gone were the long minutes of tense smiles and Sonny’s nervous rambling.  Gone were the awkward moments where Rafael would wonder when or where Sonny was going to eat or if Rafael was rude for eating alone.  They ate together.  His earlier anxious, prickly concerns about where Sonny would be sleeping felt ridiculous, as did his surly muttering about how desperately _unattractive_ he found the notion of tall blonds who knew their way around a kitchen to be.

Now…

Now Rafael is accustomed.

Accustomed to the sound of Sonny working early in the morning, before he’s even out of bed.    

Accustomed to the padding of bare feet on his kitchen tile, of Sonny’s distracted humming as he works.

To the singing of Rafael’s blood in happy recognition at the sight of Sonny when he gets home.  

Accustomed to the long, lazy weekends when Sonny has stopped trying to find things to do outside of Rafael’s penthouse and instead spends the day with him - arguing recipes, arguing wine, arguing travel.  Arguing the elegant decadence of the Italian language as compared with the invigorating staccato of Spanish.

Maybe Rafael is too accustomed.

Relying too heavily on the rush that comes at the thought of Sonny waiting for him to get him through the day.  On the easy warmth that always seems to settle between them no matter the kind of day he’s had.  On the sound of Sonny’s laughter late at night, Dean Martin playing from speaker in the living room while they both wash up and debate the merits of hosting some kind of dinner for the detectives Rafael works with.  They work too hard and besides, he wants to meet the people Rafael spends so much time complaining about.  Rafael views the idea with reluctance but Sonny views it as a welcome challenge.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” he asks playfully, reaching up to put away a mixing bowl.  Rafael tells him the incorrect place for it just so he has to reach and the clean white t-shirt has to lift up and expose skin.

“They might try and steal you from me,” Rafael tells him, voice wry but eyes sparkling.

Sonny winks at him, tossing hair off his forehead.

“Yeah, well.  I’m not going anywhere.”

He melts.

Rafael is accustomed.

Too accustomed.

Addicted.

Addicted to the sound of Sonny’s voice as it cracks with emotion, the night of their party.  After everyone else has gone home, after the plates have been washed and the leftovers put away.  After Rafael has seen just how well Sonny seems to fit in with his home, his life.  His friends.  After Sonny has turned those painfully blue eyes on him and confessed that their three weeks together have felt like a dream that he’s afraid to wake up from.  After Rafael kisses the worry from his voice and the sweet white wine from his lips.

They don’t talk for the rest of the night.

Not in anger, nor in discomfort.

The silence is because Rafael is too busy charting every plane and valley on Sonny’s body.  They speak in fragmented whispers, in soft sighs and broken utterances that still manage to convey everything they need.  Rafael is able to carve into Sonny’s flesh with the tip of his tongue the depth of his devotion - a sonnet in slick skin, long verses in the drag of his fingers.  

An epic as their bodies joined, Sonny’s back arching and his fingers winding through damp strands of Rafael’s hair.

Sonny reaches his end with his eyes closed.

Rafael can hardly stand to blink, so infatuated with the look of bliss crashing against the shore of his lover’s body.  Pale skin illuminated blue in the moonlight, painted shell pink in the rush of orgasm.  Gold and silver hair spread across his dark burgundy sheets.  Delineations, paths of milky white over the map of his torso.  Sonny is a starburst he struggles to hold, an explosion of color after a lifetime of seeing shades of gray.  

Surrender is inevitable.

Rushing at him.

Deafening.

Thighs shaking and back rigid, Rafael greets the onslaught and wonders how he’ll ever live without color again.

 

**…**

 

Their last week is spent in a haze.

A haze of stolen moments, taken before Rafael’s alarm drags him back to the real world and before the thought of food has entered their minds.  Stolen sighs, captured from Sonny’s lips in the cacophony of the shower while steam rises in lazy curls around them.  Stolen kisses, Rafael’s back against the kitchen counter and Sonny’s hands on either side of his face while something simmers on the stovetop.  Rafael doesn’t know, doesn’t particularly care.  Sustenance is insignificant to him in those moments, certain only of the fact that he needed Sonny more than he needed his next meal or the next sunrise or his next breath.  

The clock is ticking.

They’re both aware.

The uncertainty threatens to kill him.

It’s all he can think about at work, doing his best to focus on paperwork and defendants and Olivia, telling him how happy and healthy he seems.  He looks younger, laughs easier.  He’s stopped reaching for the small pharmacy in his desk drawer.  She thinks it’s the food that’s made such a marked difference in his well-being.  It hasn’t occurred to her that it might be the cook.  That maybe what he was missing in his life wasn’t regular meals - it was the light, effervescent happiness that threatened to take him over every time his thoughts turned to the man sharing his bed.

How could he ever go back to his life after this?

How could he go home without Sonny waiting on the other side of the door?

He wishes they could talk about it.

They don’t.

Partly because it seems melodramatic to talk about a goodbye as though it were final.  

Mostly because if there’s a spell holding them together they don’t want to break it.

So they go on with the dream they’ve spun around themselves.  Cooking and bickering lightly over Sonny’s taste in movies.  Eating together, each of them trying to convince the other that another glass of wine wouldn’t hurt anything.  Sonny kissing him until his head spins, until his stomach swoops low and his hands find the narrow slope of his waist.   Sonny insists on touching as much as possible, preferably with Rafael’s back to a hard surface.  As though it was needed.  As though Rafael had any intentions of moving anything but closer.

Their last night comes before he’s ready.  

As if he ever could be.

Dinner is Sonny’s masterpiece.

Simple, rustic pasta that makes Rafael’s mouth water and his taste buds soar.  The basil is fresh from his mother’s herb pots, the tomatoes picked that morning from his father’s garden in Staten Island.  The rest from farmer’s markets that only the city’s chefs know about, secret to even the culinary hobbyists.  Sonny spends all day making the pasta from scratch, mixing and kneading bread dough that tastes like butter and rosemary and complements the dish perfectly.  Rafael doesn’t speak throughout the meal, far too content to sigh and moan and watch Sonny’s face light up with every syllable of the wordless praise.  

Dessert is tiramisu - a beautiful, light thing that satisfies him to the point of happy delirium.  It’s his favorite and somehow he’s sure Sonny knows that despite never having discussed it.  He enjoys the taste of sweet coffee lingering on his tongue long after the dishes have been washed and put away.  He enjoys it more with the sight of Sonny in front of him, in nice slacks and a bright white button up.  Shiny belt buckle at his waist, drawing Rafael’s eye as it glints in the low light.  He looks less like the handsome ruffian who’s been inhabiting his kitchen for the last month and more like someone Rafael would expect to see on a catwalk or the cover of a book.

Sonny’s last dish comes to bed with them.

Small, ornate golden cups warmed over low heat until the liquids inside are molten and pliant.  

Honey.

Salted caramel.

Dark, dark chocolate.

A bottle of champagne, chilled during their dinner.

Rafael decides to treat this as a luxury.

As a last meal, as a dying wish.

He undresses Sonny with all the patience and care the act deserves, parting buttons and smoothing over skin with adoration.  It takes little convincing to allow Sonny to do the same.  Rafael doesn’t deserve the veneration in Sonny’s touch but accepts it anyway, never one to deny something Sonny so obviously wants.  Quiet and obedient, Rafael allows the younger man to peel the dress shirt from his body and toss it to the side.  He lifts his hips with the firm tap of Sonny’s fingers on his thighs, giving just enough room for his pants to be pulled from his body.  Awestruck, he watches as Sonny straddles his waist and reaches for the champagne bottle.

Naked.

Hard.

Looking at Rafael like something he could consume.

Sonny pops the cork and admires the fizz and foam leaking from the bottle.

“We didn’t bring glasses,” Rafael points out, having forgotten them entirely because Sonny had walked ahead of him into the bedroom and he was focused on other things.

“We don’t need them.”

The small splash of cold champagne in the center of his chest is jolting, bracing, and he jumps in alarm.  Sonny rocks his hips forward, riding out the buck of his lover’s surprise  before smirking and leaning down to lick the rivulets of sweet fizz from his sternum.  Rafael hisses an oath under his breath at the sight, biting his tongue so he could hear the wet drag of Sonny’s mouth over his skin.  He laves a clean line from the slight rise of his stomach to the dip of his breastbone, nose tickling the curling hairs on his chest.  He's never been harder in his life, watching Sonny drink from him and knowing the sounds spilling into the air between them had nothing to do with the champagne.  

Sonny tastes all of him this way.

Until half the bottle is gone and Sonny is flushed a beautiful crimson, buzzing and aroused.

Rafael rolls them over when he can't stand it anymore, taking a long pull from the bottle and kissing Sonny with a fervor he hasn't felt in over a decade.  The champagne gets put to the side and the caramel picked up, thick and warm as Rafael drizzles it in lazy swirls around Sonny’s torso.  Swirls he tracks and swallows down, sucking on pale skin until it darkens and the remnants of salty sweetness are gone.  Rafael applies more; dollops to the flat buds of Sonny’s nipples.  He sucks them clean, Sonny’s ragged gasps echoing in the quiet room.  Rafael is proud of the fact that he's incoherent.

Caramel is put aside.

Honey chosen next, as Rafael moves forward and rests his knees on either side of Sonny’s head.  Sonny’s face is only barely visible under the flagging swell of his cock.  Only his hair and the vibrant blue of his eyes.  

Fingers dip in, the cloying syrup heavy on his fingertips as he reaches down and offers the sweetness to Sonny.  Sonny, who lets it drip and coat his lips before opening them for a taste.  Soon Rafael's fingers are engulfed in the molten heat of his mouth, clever tongue wrapping around the digits and sucking them clean.  The noise itself has Rafael thrusting into thin air, looking for friction  he isn't going to get.  He takes another dip into the cup, offers it again.  Sonny licks him clean, slurping and moaning as though Rafael’s fingers were giving him all the pleasure he needed.  As though Rafael doesn’t plan on achieving so much more.

The next smear of honey doesn’t go to Sonny’s mouth.

He whines in protest, even as his eyes watch Rafael’s hand lower to grip himself.  Honey drips and crawls, thick in the thatch of curls at the root and in fine silken fibers as it drips onto his sac.  Sonny watches, transfixed, until the first drop falls from his body and lands on Sonny’s chin.  It’s only then that his hunger returns, ravenous as he lifts his head to mouth at the swinging flesh and the tender skin behind it.  Rafael gasps, groans.  Grips himself tighter because Sonny’s moans of pleasure were bound to have him coming sooner than planned.  

He rocks himself over Sonny’s mouth.

Back, where Sonny can lick at the base of him in long strokes.

Forth, where Sonny can suck the barest hint of sweetness from the folds of his sac.

His eyes close, his other hand grabs the headboard.

He’s going to come.

He pulls away.

Sonny is breathless but compliant while Rafael offers his fingers one last time, ridding them of the stickiness leftover.  

When Rafael finally hauls Sonny’s body down onto him it feels like it’s been years since last they were here - Sonny rolling his hips over Rafael, fingers digging into the hair on his chest, still sticky with champagne.  His lover rides him slow and steady, even though it seems to pain him.  Sonny looks like it’s agony to take his time and build them up, to take them higher, while his legs shake and his heart races.  Rafael looks on, struck by the sight.  Sonny’s blue eyes flashing bright in the moonlight, lush lips parted on a bone-deep sigh as he moves.

Rafael is going to die.

Right here, right now.

His heart is a heavy drumming in his chest and his ears are roaring and Sonny looks so goddamn gorgeous on top of him that he doesn’t think he can stand the sight.  He closes his eyes to it, prays for strength in a voice gone weak.  Sonny’s rhythm has increased, his breathing has grown heavy and jagged.  Even in one short week Rafael knows the signs.  

Rafael takes hold of him.

Sonny jerks, his body clenches him tight even as he races toward his own finish.  His knees dig into Rafael’s sides, every breath is a cry, and Sonny reaches to the side to grasp at the last golden cup - the chocolate, cooled now but still soft.  Sonny coats his fingers and offers it to Rafael, eyes wide and mouth open when Rafael takes him into his mouth.  The dark chocolate is earthy and sweet on the sweat-slicked salt of Sonny’s fingers and he curls his tongue around it, sucking as much of it off as he can as it melts and slips away.  Rafael takes Sonny’s fingers deeper, to the back of his tongue, and swallows around them.

Sonny comes in a rush, streaming over the length of Rafael’s stomach and slicking his fingers.  He tenses and flexes, clamping down on Rafael so hard he sees stars behind his eyes.  He throbs for long seconds, trembles for a long minute while he spills the last of his seed into Rafael’s grasp.  When finally he comes down, when he looks at Rafael below him, the smile that creeps into the corner of his mouth makes Rafael want cry.  It makes him want to come.  It makes him roll Sonny to the side, onto his back, where he can kiss a taste of the chocolate on his tongue into Sonny’s slack mouth.

Rafael is back inside him in a moment.

Less than a second.

Just enough time for the lack of Sonny’s warmth to consume him and force him forward again, thrusting into his body with the last of his control.  He moves quickly, roughly.  Daring the night to end, daring the moment to dissipate.  For those few minutes they are infinite - destined to stay forever here, forever entwined.  Forever connected.  

Forever in love.

Infinity ends.

It always does.

This time with the snapping of Rafael’s hips, with the pained release of come inside Sonny’s waiting body.  Sonny kisses him through it, drinks the gasps from his lungs and bites the stunned curses from his lips.  He takes Rafael’s weight as he collapses, unable to hold himself upright for even another moment.  Sonny doesn’t seem to mind.  He just wraps his arms around Rafael, pressing mindless kisses into his hair while his hands splay themselves over his back.  

They shower together, washing the remnants of the night from their skin.

They kiss, they laugh.

They breathe each other’s air and pretend the night will last forever.

Rafael wants to tell him he doesn’t believe in love.

He wants to tell him that he might now.

Rafael falls asleep with the words still on his lips.

 

**…**

 

It's been a week.

A week since Sonny turned the lights off and locked Rafael’s door for the last time.  He slid his key under the mat, where Lieutenant Benson had left it for him in the first place.  A month and one week ago, before his life turned on a dime and he realized everything that was wrong with the way he’d been living.

Sonny was… nomadic.

Sonny took jobs that were temporary.  He was a cruise chef for a while, straight out of culinary school.  He’s done restaurants and food trucks and catering.  When he found the opportunity for being a personal chef - the longest job being six month stretches - he couldn’t wait.  New people, new tastes, in homes all over the state.  He could cook mac and cheese for the kids and coq au vin for the adults.  Finger food for upscale cocktail parties and massive spreads for family reunions.  Kids loved him, little old ladies yelled at him about eating more, and feeding a new set of faces all the time was the closest he'd ever felt to a calling.  It felt like finding a new slice of home every few weeks.

He loved it.

Until it came time to lock Rafael’s door.

And here he was.

Wanting a kitchen other than the sleek modern one he occupies now, even with all the gadgets he could want and more appliances than he’s ever had access to at once.  All he can think about is the small, slate-colored island where he’d trapped Rafael to kiss syrup from his lips.  The cutting board he’d been washing the first time Rafael put his wide hand on Sonny’s lower back and asked what he was doing later, as though Sonny hadn’t already been planning on following him to bed.  The smell of Rafael’s soft cologne breaking through the haze of food, clear and alluring.  Beckoning him forward to find its source at Rafael’s pulsepoint.

He misses him.

Rafael hasn’t called, hasn’t texted.

Rafael is busy, he knows that.

He’s also too proud for his own good.

Meaning Sonny is the one who needs to reach out, but how?  How, when the idea of rebuke - or worse, damning silence - has him too afraid to even look at his phone?

So he finishes the week at this hedge fund manager’s third mansion, cooking complicated dishes to impress the man’s in-laws, and then he goes home.  He doesn’t have another job lined up yet, no new requests have come through, so it’s possible he’ll have a few days off before packing up to live somewhere else.  Another kitchen he doesn’t want, another family who isn’t Rafael.

He sighs and hefts his backpack over his shoulder, thankful at least when his ride is on time.

When he gets home it’s close to ten.  He’s got a mild ache between his shoulders from hunching all day and he's yawning once every ten to fifteen minutes.  Rafael is his every other thought. His phone is in his pocket but tonight isn't the night to push himself.  Maybe.  Maybe after a beer and something to eat, since he didn't eat earlier.  His client’s dinner that day included artichoke and he was allergic, so holding out had been fairly easy. It just meant he'd heat up something frozen and watch a few minutes of meaningless television before passing out.  

Probably on his couch.

Probably holding his phone, hoping for the chime of a message.

Sonny pushes his key into the lock on his front door, wondering again what he'd say.

_I hope you haven't gone back to pretzels and scotch._

_I spend every night wishing I was back in your bed._

_Miss me yet?_

_Sometimes I think you've ruined me for the rest of my life because you might not be in it._

_I miss you._

All wrong.

He’ll think of something better tomorrow.  Tomorrow, when he's rested and a little more in control of the thoughts flitting through his head.  

Sonny lets himself in and locks the door behind him, first struck by the mess and then by the smell.  Not because he hadn't taken the trash out before he left - he'd learned that lesson one too many times now - but because the smell of diced garlic cooking alongside sweet onions was among his very favorite, and there was no reason his apartment should smell like this.  Not unless…

Sonny drops his backpack by the door and creeps through his living room, heart thumping.  The lights are all on, music drifting from the direction of the kitchen.  His heart recognizes the strains long before his brain ever does.

Dean Martin.

He rounds the corner and there he is.

Rafael.

In designer jeans and a black polo,  barefoot.  Making himself well and truly at home in Sonny’s modest kitchen.  Cooking something that smelled like steak, airing a dark bottle of Merlot on the counter a few feet away despite the fact that Rafael is more inclined toward Cabernet.

“Finally,” Rafael says, pretending to be put upon.  “Do you always get home this late?”

“Do you always break and enter into people's’ apartments?”

He scoffs.

“I didn't break into anything.  I work with the police.  I persuaded your super with a fifty and the other bottle of wine.”

Sonny doesn't respond.

He can't.  

All he can do is rush forward and take Rafael’s grinning face in his hands, brushing his thumbs over graying temples and leaning his head forward until their lips meet. Softly, reacquainting, until Sonny's senses are flush with the sound and feel and taste of Rafael in his arms.  Like he'd never been anywhere else.  Like it hadn't been a week, seven long days, since he'd last felt this happy, this lucky.  

Sonny speaks first, almost giddy.  

“You're here.”

“I missed you,” Rafael confesses in a pained whisper. “My house feels empty without you messing up my kitchen.”

Sonny grins.

“Is that a line, counselor?”

Rafael rolls his eyes.

Gently.

Affectionately.

“It's an invitation,” he corrects.  “If ever you feel like messing it up again.  Maybe tomorrow night.  And the night after that.  And the night after that…”

“Yeah,” Sonny gasps, kissing him again.  “Yeah, I can do that.”


End file.
